


Can I Get That With A Pump of Ginger Beer Syrup?

by kayliemalinza



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Alien Technology, Fluff, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-28
Updated: 2008-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Jane and the Doctor end up in an intergalactic Starbucks, where Sarah Jane experiences an existential crisis and the Doctor says something silly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can I Get That With A Pump of Ginger Beer Syrup?

**Author's Note:**

> Set after _Masque of Mandragora_ and refers to the events of _The Android Invasion_. Thus, slight spoilers for both serials.
> 
> * * *

"Oh!" says the Doctor in the tone of voice that means, _By golly, I've just figured it out!_ except Sarah Jane has never heard the Doctor say "By golly" except for that one time when he was making fun of the one-eyed insectosaur whose automatic translator learned English from old radio broadcasts that had, thousands of years later, finally reached his small and unpleasant world. ("I guess he _would_ like the idea of a monocle," Sarah had muttered to the Doctor, which made him snicker and caused the insectosaur to squint his one eye suspiciously and thrash his tapered, scaly tail.) Anyway, that was the only time Sarah has ever heard the Doctor literally say "by golly" but his tone of voice implies it regularly, such as now, when they're standing in front of a large, gleaming building with a circular logo.

"Do you know what this building is for, then?" Sarah asks, somewhat snippishly. She's still irked that her suggestion of "an intergalactic chip shop" was so readily dismissed.

"Why, of course I know!" says the Doctor, and grins at her. "It's a Starbucks!"

"A what?" says Sarah.

"Oh, come on, you know what a Starbucks is!" The Doctor admonishes. "They're all over Earth! They _started_ on Earth in–oh." He clears his throat. "I suppose you're a few decades too early. Never mind, then. Let's go inside!" He bundles her inside the shiny rotating doors with a rudeness that Sarah will use years later to justify the small, judicious investment she will make in a small company known on the U.S. stock market as "SBUX." Another justification is that being a freelance investigator of alien threats on Earth is a thankless, expensive, and very poor-paying job: she will have to pay for the petrol to drive to all those rock quarries _somehow_. If it just so happens that there will be very good evidence that an alien race will attack Hawaii every winter, she can't just ignore it, can she? It will be her duty as a time-and-space-savvy Earthling to lay in wait on those horribly sun-drenched and gorgeous beaches, even though she would much rather be in dark, wet London where the radiator in her flat has stopped working. Her heart will yearn for England in those times. Really.

"...thousands of drinks available, in millions of customisable combinations. By this point in the franchise's history, the list of syrups alone is longer than–" the Doctor's explanation cuts off as he catches sight of the signage suspended above the counter and stares, transfixed.

"What?" asks Sarah, glancing around at all the various species visible around them (pseudopods, tentacles and hooves, oh my!), milling in small groups, lounging on oddly-configured chairs in dim-lit corners, or hunkering over slick-topped tables. "What's wrong; why've you stopped talking?" she asks again, then follows the Doctor's gaze. "Wow," she says. The board is huge, splashed with pictures of cups and pastries in strange shapes, and cluttered with swoopy lettering. The colors of the board are flushed and swirly, rainbow vividness slapped against dull. "That's–beautiful," she says softly.

"It's a menu," says the Doctor.

"It's still beautiful," Sarah grumbles back.

The Doctor turns to grin at her. "It is, isn't it? I haven't seen this type of writing in ages! We must be in the Terasino galaxies, or some place very near them."

"I can't read a word of it," Sarah says, squinting. "Why doesn't the TARDIS translate it for me?"

"Because it can't," says the Doctor, pushing Sarah behind himself and out of the way of a group of aliens bustling to the order line.

"It translates everything else!" Sarah protests, circling behind the Doctor to stare at the board again. She squints her eyes super hard and the writing still doesn't make sense. "Why not this?"

"Because," the Doctor says patiently (except not, because he's smirking, and who can really claim to be all that patient when they're smirking at you?) "This language uses colours to denote meaning–including some colours that are outside the range of your perception, my dear human. It's a psychological impossibility for the TARDIS to translate what you can't perceive to begin with."

Sarah rubs at her eyes, then drops her hands in disappointment. "Wouldn't that make it a biological impossibility, then?"

"Hmm?" says the Doctor, staring at the corner of the board where the colours are particularly dull, and the pastries remind Sarah of the more stellar disasters that erupted from her oven before she decided to give up baking as a bad job.

"If I can't see the colours because of the way my eyes are constructed, because of the rods and the cones–"

"They're not rods and cones," the Doctor interrupts.

"They are!" Sarah says. "One of my friends is an eye doctor, and he showed me these pictures–"

The Doctor scoffs. "Of course it's going to look like rods and cones if you're using primitive 20th century viewing equipment."

"Doctor," Sarah says warningly. The Doctor grins but obligingly shuts up so Sarah asks again, "Why did you say it was a psychological impossibility?"

"The TARDIS has no problems making you see things that aren't there but that your brain imagines could be. However, if it made you see these colours, your brain wouldn't know what to do with the information. It couldn't process it."

"Oh," says Sarah. "That makes sense, I suppose. But did you really mean it, that the TARDIS can make me see things that aren't there?"

"I wonder if their parqhuit blended latte is any good," the Doctor murmurs, forefinger stroking his upper lip. "I generally say only the Harkinions know how to stew parqhuits, but perhaps I'm being unduly biased."

"Doctor!" Sarah says sharply, and maybe stomps her foot. Just a little stomp.

"Yes? What is it?" the Doctor says back, still not really paying attention.

Sarah grabs the edge of his sleeve and spins him to face her. "Can the TARDIS really make me see things that aren't there?" she asks again.

"Of course it can, that's how the translation works," the Doctor says. "It can make you hear things and feel things, too."

Sarah bites her lips and laughs a bit. "I guess it's a good thing the TARDIS doesn't have a sense of humour, then," she says.

"What makes you think it doesn't?" says the Doctor. He flashes a brief grin at her, then prods her further away from the line to a group of chairs that seem reasonably sittable for humanoids. "Why don't you sit here, and I'll go order something for you," he says and pushes her into the nearest chair, which is a patterned with a peculiar fluorescent green and dusty pink plaid. He walks off but is yanked back by Sarah, who's wrapped the ends of his scarf around her hands. "Don't you want something to drink?"

Sarah sighs in exasperation. "Yes, but first, tell me. All the planets and aliens species I've seen, all our adventures–was any of it just in my head? You know, just an illusion created by the TARDIS?"

The Doctor finagles his scarf from her grip. "We don't really have the time for a discussion on existential philosophy," he says. "Now, would you like something hot, or cold?"

Sarah glares at him for a moment, then slumps back into the chair, defeated. "Cold," she says. "It's awfully stuffy in here. But don't think I won't get an answer out of you eventually!" she calls out as he moves away.

"I'll get you something you'll like!" the Doctor calls back, waving his hand.

By the time he returns, Sarah Jane has nearly figured out how to sit in the chair without the middle ridge of it sticking into her back. Once she negotiates the flexible arm-rests, it's really quite comfy. The fabric is particularly soft and nubbly, although the greasiness of it makes Sarah think of sheep's wool, and she doesn't like sheep. One of them stole her favorite hat when she was ten.

"It took quite a lot of customizing, but I think I concocted something familiar and to your taste," the Doctor says, handing Sarah a cube-shaped glass that's sweating cold and slightly blue.

"Something familiar!" Sarah protests. "After traveling all this way to find something alien?"

"It's better than something that tastes bad, or not like anything at all," the Doctor says. "You humans have such limited taste buds."

"Luckily, you love us for our spunk," smirks Sarah, and takes a cautious sip from the open top. "Ugh!"

"Do you like it?" the Doctor asks, settling in the opposite chair with a container that seems to be a fat plastic tube twisted into knots. He does not, Sarah notices, have any problems finding a comfortable position right off.

"It's just like ginger beer!" Sarah says.

"Exactly," says the Doctor, very pleased.

"I can't stand ginger beer," Sarah says, and sets the cube down on the nearby table.

The Doctor is upset. "I thought you liked ginger beer!" he cries. When Sarah Jane shakes her head he grumbles, "You said you liked it, once."

"I did not!" she says.

"Yes you did," says the Doctor, "You said it was delicious!"

"The TARDIS must be playing tricks on your mind, then, because I would never say a thing like that about _ginger beer_ ," Sarah sneers, as if ginger beer is analogous to goat's milk gone off.

"You said it just a few weeks ago, you remember!" says the Doctor. "We were on Earth, in that little village, just before we discovered that the Kraals were–" he stops talking suddenly and stares down at his knotted-up drink. "Would you like to try mine?" he asks, offering it.

Sarah Jane crosses her arms and grins. "It was an android, wasn't it?" she says.

"Beg pardon?" says the Doctor. "Really, do try this. It's got parqhuits in it; they're a sort of root vegetable."

"One of the androids created by the Kraals, the one that was a replica of me. That's who said ginger beer was delicious, isn't it?" Sarah says mercilessly. "You can't tell the difference between the real Sarah Jane and an android!"

"Don't be ridiculous!" snaps the Doctor. "I knew it was the android from the beginning, I just became confused somewhat in the recollection. It could happen to anyone."

"But you aren't anyone, are you? You're the _Doctor_ ," says Sarah smugly, then pries the purple-colored plastic tube knot from the Doctor's hands. After a moment of searching, she finds a soft nipple on the side and suckles at it. "Oh," she says. "This is quite good."

The Doctor grabs her pseudo-ginger-beer cube from the table and sinks into the back of his chair. "It makes me very sad that you don't like ginger beer," he says sulkily.

"You poor dear thing," says Sarah, and sucks eagerly at the parqhuit latte.


End file.
